Farmers call homosexual rams ‘unprofitable.’ If a male refuses to mate with a female during mating season, his fate is the slaughterhouse. As simple as that, as brutal as that. Michael Stücke, a 52-year-old farmer in Löhne, Germany, found out in 2023 and could not ignore it.
Since then, Stücke has opened the doors of his farm to any ram that is going to be slaughtered for this reason. The process even includes a verification test: they place him in an enclosure with ewes during mating season and, if the male shows no interest, he becomes part of the flock at Rainbow Wool, the nonprofit organization that he himself founded. ‘It happens in a matter of minutes,’ Stücke says about what happens when a new ram arrives and integrates with the others. In 2025, the app Grindr partnered with him to produce a fashion show in New York featuring garments knitted from the wool of his sheep, designed by Michael Schmidt, who has dressed Madonna and Cher.
The funds raised have already helped nearly 2,000 people escape from countries where being gay is illegal. It all began with a farmer who simply did not want to look the other way.